Three kilns and a fiber blanket…

Remember the other day when I left my kiln on all night? Well, it happened two more times after that. Or so I thought. Come to find out, I changed something in my program so the regular sequence of buttons I press to send my kiln into anneal mode doesn’t work…it just keeps chugging along at the holding temperature. I thought I was losing my mind. But I figured it out and now I’m back on track.

The problem with the kiln being on all night, as I said, other than the fact that it seems like a huge safety hazard, is that you can’t use it when you get to the studio because it needs hours to cool down properly. So, I pulled out the Chili Pepper (the red annealer shown here). I needed it elevated for ease of use and didn’t have anything fire proof at that level so I pulled out the other kiln, from my pmc days, and used that. Why is it that you don’t realize how much stuff you have until you see it all together. I had everything put away so nicely I didn’t realize I had three kilns. What’s worse? I have another Chili Pepper that I got really cheap beacause the element needs to be replaced. I have the element, it just needs to be installed. When we built the studio we designed it for at least three work stations so that’s why the extra equipment.

Here’s the really sad part. Three kilns. All sitting there in working condition and look what I still use sometimes:

A fiber blanket. Don’t worry, those aren’t beads in there that I would sell to anyone. That’s what I do when I’m writing and need the steps to photograph. I don’t want to wait for them to anneal beacause I won’t use them for anything else. I just need them to last long enough to take photographs. Oh, and excuse that mess…I haven’t gotten to that yet.